Ladies and gentlemen, the legendary Genesis.
The above song more or less reflects how I've been feeling during most of this past month. Without getting into a whole lot of detail, recent events have made me realize I need to get out of my current day job. For the last two years I've been working part-time at a retail store, and for a while it was a pretty laidback gig. It was a huge improvement over my last job, which was a job at a different retail store, and I had to quit that one in a hurry because the environment there had become too toxic. If I hadn't quit, I likely would've eventually done something that would've gotten me fired and quite possibly also thrown in either jail of a mental institution.
Anyway, things with my current job have been gradually going south ever since the middle of last year. In fact I've sort of been in denial about a lot of the problems I've been having with it until just recently. So I've started applying for full-time jobs that are outside of the retail industry. I even had an interview over the phone for one of those jobs a couple of days ago. Unfortunately that job didn't pan out, but I'm not going to give up.
If I'm being honest though, I'm not really eager to get a new job because it'll likely mean some radical changes to my life. The thing is there have already been some changes, and none of them have been for the better. One of the more unfortunate aspects of life is if we don't change every now and then, things can change on us and we can suddenly find ourselves in a less than ideal situation. Nothing last forever in this world. We only have phases in life and periods of time.
At the same time I was suddenly hit with the events that made me realize I needed to get a new job, my dad informed me that he's scheduled to have heart surgery on the first of next month. This is a much more serious procedure than the one he had done on his heart last year. For this surgery they have to actually crack open his chest. While I do have confidence in the surgical staff, I can't help but worry that something will go wrong during the procedure or that my dad will develop complications of some kind. So that's all been weighing on me for the past month.
Meanwhile, it seems like the entire world has also been having a pretty bad month. I'm sure those of you reading who have been following the news are aware of the tariffs that the orange lunatic in the White House has tried imposing on every other country in the world, including two small islands apparently inhabited only by penguins. I guess we should at least be glad he didn't try putting tariffs on countries that only exit in fiction.
Hypothetical Newscaster: "Earlier today, President Trump announced that he will be imposing a forty percent tariff on the fictional land of Narnia."
But seriously, these tariffs are bad news for everyone, including those of us in the anime and gaming communities. The best example of this is how Nintendo decided to hold off on accepting preorders for their new Switch 2 system. This actually hasn't been a bid deal since I haven't preordered the Switch 2, and that's because my Switch Lite still works just fine (mostly). I realize I probably will have to get it eventually if I want to play whatever the next core Pokémon games are going to be, but I'm in no hurry to spend four-hundred and fifty bucks to replace a device that's still functional and doesn't have any major problems. The point I'm trying to make though is when and if these tariffs finally go into effect, the Switch 2 will likely become even more expensive.
This is also means that any collectables made in Japan like anime figures will also become even more expensive. This doesn't really affect me either since I don't really collect anime figures myself. I have bought a few cheap ones in the past though to serve as decoration. For instance, I have figures of Kirito and Asuna on top of the bookcase where I keep all of my Sword Art Online light novels. Anyway, for those who do collect anime figures, these times are likely going to be hard on your wallet.
